The Billionaire's Secret, Their Fury, Our Fight

s breaths were shallow, each one a fragile, rattling sound in the quiet of t

single mom working two jobs, all for me, all for the dream of a scholarship that would get me out of our cramped, failing neighborho

to us. Mr. Sterling. The tech mogul whose face was on magazine co

fluttered open, he

she rasped, her voice a

readable, a mask of po

e her. Take

for," he said, his ton

my hand, a final, desperate sur

fraction of a sec

th seemed to leave her. The beeping of the machine beside her bed flat

t appeared at my side. Ms. Davis, Mr. Sterling' s

oice crisp and devoid of a

, the smell of her cheap perfume, the sound of her laughter as we watched old movies. It was all I had ever known. Now it was just a

pulled my hand away from my

the car," she stated, not as

m, down the long, quiet hallway.

ew, with its graffiti-covered walls and noisy streets, blurred past the tinted window. It felt like watching a movie of someone else' s li

iveway. At the end of it stood a mansion. It wasn' t a home; it was a monument of g

oor. "Welcome to the

as vast and empty, my worn-out sneakers looking dirty on the gleaming marble floo